Tips for Tourists: on a Bike around Milan

A lot of people are used to move around riding a bike, instead of using a car or even public transportation.

Since 2008, Milan has been offering a Bike Sharing service, one of the first in Italy, that allows its users to take a bicycle from any bike station and ride it, leaving it in another station, without the hassle of having to worry about the bike being stolen or damaged: if you need it again, you’ll just go to the nearest bike station and pick up another one.

In these last 3 years, the number of stations has been increasing steadily, now there are 192 of them, but the idea is to arrive at 300, for a total of 5000 bikes, covering all of downtown, underground stations, hospitals, universities, tourist attractions exactly like public transport system.

BikeMi works this way: you need to subscribe, there are different option, but for tourists the best one is the temporary subscription, either the weekly one if you’re planning on using the service for more than a day, or the daily one: the cost is 6€ for a week, and 2,5€ for a day.

You can subscribe on  the BikeMi website, just remember that you need to use a credit card to pay (at this moment the only accepted credit cards are Visa and Mastercard), then you’ll recive by e-mail a usercode and a password to use at the BikeMi station.

If you can’t check your e-mail account while in Milan, you can to to an ATM Point and register there. It would be a good time to register also to WiMi in order to use the free wireless service in the Duomo area.

After you get the codes, you can just go to the nearest bike station and pick up one. The first 30 minutes are for free, then it’s 0,50€ for each half  hour of use up to a maximum limit of 2 hours, and after that it’s 2€ each 30 minutes, but if you exceed the limit of 2 hours of use, after the third time your subscription will be canceled. This service provides a bike if  you need to move around the city to go from point A to point B, not if you want to go on a day-long excursion someplace else (if that's the case, check  Rossignoli Cicli and AWS Bici Motor).

If you’re visiting Milan, it’s the perfect way to move around, since most of the things to see in the city are near a BikeMi station, and it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to go from one station to the other: it would probably take less than an hour to cross downtown Milan.

So, now that summer is coming, you might want to tour the city from a different perspective, saving some money while you’re at it: if instead of using BikeMi, you decide to use the public transportation, a daily ticket costs 3€ (is valid 24 hours sice you first use it, non since you buy it, remember!).

Another option, if you like to ride a bike but you're not exactly sure of where to go, you can book a tour with Bike and the City. I've never tried it, so any feedback would be nice.

For more information about BikeMi, you can go to the official website, even if I have to say, the english version doesn't explain too much, just the essential thing. You'll be able to see a map of all the stations and the bikes they have, in real time. There are also some apps for iphone, but the app of the public transport company does not include BikeMi, and the unofficial apps, from what I've heard, are not up to date.

Have a nice ride!!!